Yogamatters Brand Guidelines: The London Yoga Supplier Two Iyengar Teachers Started in 1996

Two Iyengar teachers and a supply problem.

Yogamatters began in London in 1996. The company says it was founded that year by two Iyengar Yoga teachers, Paul Walker and Sandi Sharkey, who wanted to give students and teachers in the UK access to the mats and props their practice called for. In its early days, it says, the pair sold yoga mats after class from the back of their car.

Iyengar Yoga, the method developed by B.K.S. Iyengar, makes heavy use of equipment — blocks, belts, bolsters, blankets and chairs — and that connection is still visible. Yogamatters runs a discount scheme for members of Iyengar Yoga (UK), the national association for the method, and its site carries a page about the relationship. Sharkey has taught yoga in London for more than thirty years, the company’s journal said in a 2019 interview, specialising in pre- and postnatal and baby yoga classes.

The business became a limited company later than its founding date suggests. The UK register, Companies House, lists Yogamatters Ltd as a private limited company incorporated in May 2001, with its registered office in north London and its business classed as retail sale by mail order or over the internet. The company counts its history from 1996, and its website footer still reads “Established in 1996.”

Its base is Muswell Hill, in north London. The trade body the Direct Commerce Association described the Yogamatters team as based there in February 2020, and the registered office is in the same area.

Its own props and other makers’ mats.

Yogamatters works as both a retailer and a brand. Its website sells mats, props, meditation equipment and clothing under its own Yogamatters name, alongside mats from other makers, including Manduka and Jade Yoga. Its mat range is organised by material — sticky, cork, rubber and recycled — and by use, with travel, thick and kit options.

Props make up much of the rest: bolsters, blocks and bricks, belts, blankets, eye pillows and sandbags, chairs and wheels, and wall ropes of the kind used in Iyengar classes. The company also supplies studios and teachers directly, with wholesale ordering and a teacher-and-studio discount programme listed on its website.

Where the products come from is described in the company’s own words. In a letter on its journal in August 2026, Twanna Doherty, who joined as managing director in 2014, wrote of the company’s relationships with its partners and makers in India, and said the whole team had travelled there together earlier that year. That is the company’s own account.

Its clothing has drawn on outside materials suppliers. The Italian fibre maker Aquafil lists Yogamatters among the brands using its ECONYL regenerated nylon, describing a Yogamatters activewear collection made with it; that is Aquafil’s description of the partnership.

In 2026 the company marked its thirtieth year with a 30th Anniversary Collection on its website and the August letter, in which Doherty credited Walker as the founder who had invited her into the business.

Design and documentation.

Yoga equipment is a quiet category to design for. The core product is a long flat sheet, and much of a brand’s identity has to live on that surface: in the colour range it offers, in any graphics printed on the mat, and in the material it is made from. Some brands keep the surface plain and sell their mats as a run of solid colours; others print artwork or guide lines across it, as Liforme does with the centre line, end lines and 45-degree marks it calls AlignForMe.

Material is often the main message. Makers in this guide describe their products in terms of what they are made from — natural rubber, polyurethane top layers, cork — and present those materials as part of the brand. Jade Yoga’s story, for example, begins with natural-rubber rug pads made by the same family business before it sold its first yoga mat. Claims about materials in this guide are the companies’ own unless a dated source is cited.

Props widen the palette. Blocks, bolsters, straps, blankets and meditation cushions bring in other surfaces — cork, wood, cotton and other textiles — and a brand’s colours and prints have to work across foam, fabric and rubber as well as on a website and a box. Liforme and Jade Yoga both sell through their own websites as well as through retailers and studios, so the website is where much of each identity is seen.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word. Colours and typefaces shown are unofficial interpretations; no product or logo is reproduced.

A clothing label and a holding company.

Yogamatters has grown by acquisition as well as by range. In February 2020 it bought Gossypium, an ethical yoga and activewear clothing brand, the Direct Commerce Association reported on 13 February 2020. Founded in 1998, Gossypium had used Fairtrade and organic cotton in the UK and made its garments in the UK, the report said, and it would now work alongside the Yogamatters team in Muswell Hill. Terms were not disclosed.

The same report quoted Twanna Doherty, as Yogamatters’ managing director, saying the company had chosen to invest in a like-minded brand with a heritage in sustainability, and named Gossypium’s founder as Thomas Petit, who said he had known the Yogamatters team for many years.

The ownership of Yogamatters Ltd itself is recorded at Companies House. Since July 2023 the person with significant control has been a company, All Together Holdings Limited, registered in England and Wales, which holds more than three-quarters of its shares and voting rights, according to the register. Doherty describes herself as having led Yogamatters for more than a decade, while stating that she did not found it.

Her anniversary letter, published on the company’s journal on 21 August 2026, framed the thirty years as the work of many people rather than of the business alone: the teachers who had shaped it, the customers, the makers and partners, and staff past and present. It described Doherty’s own role as having changed over the years since she arrived in 2014, almost halfway through the company’s history, and closed by acknowledging Walker as the founder who had established its values from the beginning.

For a design guide, Yogamatters shows how a supplier rooted in one teaching method can build a brand that sits alongside the other brands it sells. Compare Manduka, one of the mat brands it stocks, and Hugger Mugger, an American prop maker also born of Iyengar teaching. For this guide we use teal, unbleached cotton and terracotta with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Yogamatters’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.